Shin’hare

The shin’hare are a hyper-aggressive race of rabbits that is primarily motivated by an insatiable desire to conquer and oppress. Their society is rigidly feudalistic and has clearly defined class roles that are determined at birth. From the first moment it appears in a birthing cavern, a shin’hare’s function is established. For a great majority of shin’hare, that societal function is to serve as cannon fodder in their culture’s unending craving for subjugation.

The shin’hare place no value in any individual life. Because they can reproduce at a breathtaking rate, an important aspect of their combat tactics involves overwhelming their foes with sheer numbers. In any battle, masses of shin’hare are likely to be slaughtered, but they can always breed more.

Though physically frail and small, shin’hare compensate with well-trained agility, tenacious ferocity, and sheer numbers. A single shin’hare samurai is a surprisingly formidable warrior, and an enemy would make a grievous mistake to underestimate one, let alone an entire regiment of them.

All shin’hare are bred to serve a specific purpose, without deviation or expectation to be anything other than their assigned role. The vast majority of shin’hare are bred to be peasants and shock troops. The lives of the peasant class are considered to have no value, even to themselves. They know their existence is going to be brief, wicked, and end in violence, so they are taught to take as many enemies with them into death as they can.

Shin’hare clerics and rangers typically serve as field generals, directing the hordes of peasant shock troops in battle. The samurai swords of shin’hare warriors must be forged in blood. Shin’hare peasants are bred exclusively to be sacrificed in horrific rituals that use Blood Magic to temper the katanas of the samurai. Those elite samurai that achieve exceptional glory in battle are amongst the most esteemed members of shin’hare society and are often rewarded with a harem of females that have been specifically bred to serve at their pleasure. A few elite warriors are selected as studs for the Concubunnies, which is considered to be a glorious honor.

Once they discovered the existence of the relatively peaceful coyotle, the shin’hare launched countless raids on the Howling Plains. The shin’hare were desperate to enslave the coyotle and learn their secrets about how to control weather. Though the coyotle were able to fend off most of the shin’hare attacks, there were heavy casualties on both sides.

The never-ending shin’hare assault on the coyotle, along with their renewed aggression on the outskirts of the Feralroot Woods, prompted the elves to act once again. One thousand years ago, the elves joined with the humans to drive the shin’hare underground once and for all.

Exiled once again, the shin’hare did what they always do: adapt and thrive. They managed to forge a key alliance with the vennen, who taught them the mysteries of Blood Magic. Also, once they established their domain beneath the surface, the shin’hare finally discovered a race they could successfully enslave: the shroomkin, a passive race of walking mushrooms.

Three hundred years ago, the necrotic approached the shin’hare with an offer of alliance. Once the shin’hare understood that this meant a chance to assault the surface world that rejected them, they eagerly accepted. The shin’hare joined the Underworld alliance, and were enthusiastic participants in the Underworld Incursion.

Exalted Emperor
A shin’hare that manages to die of old age (an extraordinarily rare occurrence) will live no longer than 40 years. An Exalted Emperor, however, can live for a century or more, and the current one, Emperor Ito, has remained alive for close to 150 years. A cabal of shin’hare warlocks is assigned to keep the Exalted Emperor breathing for as long as they can by using twisted Wild and Blood Magic rituals to unnaturally extend his life. These ceremonies often cause physical mutations in the Emperor, such as causing him to grow to an absurd height or sprouting extra limbs, ears, and mouths.

House Moon'ariu
The literature written by the elders of House Moon'ariu emphasizes redemption through sacrifice.

Milky Eye
Each killblade has one of their eyes replaced with a cloudy magical orb. The oracle keeps all of the extracted eyes in a large glass jar and can track the movements of all the killblades.

Recommended Tribal Strategies
Among all variants of Shin'hare persists a playing style of swarming and manipulating the tribal generated Battle Hopper tokens. Currently most Shin'hare cards are capable of either creating, supporting or benefiting from these tokens. Because the Battle Hopper tokens can be created in large numbers very quickly, the tribe is very reliant on them for both offense and blocking defense. To get the best results from this, the deck often focuses on using the early game to create tokens and then exploding with their offensive strategy using a mass amount of tokens and supporting cards in the later turns of the game.

Using the Wild Shard Shin'hares makes use of the tribes consistency in creating Battle Hopper tokens very quickly in this shard. Ritualist of the Spring Litter will accelerate your token creation cards and is strongly advised to be used in combo with cards like Concubunny, Runts of the Litter and the champion Monika'shin. Once the tokens are created, they can help in making a threat with tribal cards like Bucktooth Commander or Rune Ear Commander. Outside of the tribe but still in the wild shard, Onslaught and Evolve are common cards in creating an offensive threat with your Battle Hopper tokens as well.

By delving into the tribes Blood Shard support, you'll find more situational token creation and far greater manipulation of Shin'hares for the benefit of individual cards. While Blood variants of Shin'hare may be sometimes seen with less Battle Hopper tokens than a pure Wild strategy, this is not a weakness and only happens because the tokens were sacrificed to make the Shin'hare cards around them much stronger. Among these token reliant Blood Shin'hares are Blood Cauldron Ritualist who offers a troop with powerful stats for it's 3 resource cost, as long as you can pay the sacrifice each time you need those stats, Boltpaw Wizard who can turn enemy troops to their original form or attack their deck size for the cost of a sacrifice and one resource, Hop'hiro, Samurai who will Transform into multiple forms and if given the sacrifices required to reach the final form Hop'hiro, Samurai Warlord can destroy your opponents entire field, and lastly Shin'hare Eulogist who gains permanent stats after every Shin'hare death. Outside of the Shin'hare tribe, The Mushwocky can also be used to create a singular powerful troop out of mass sacrificing Shin'hare troops. In addition to these singular troops, the Blood side of the tribe can also create tokens through sacrificing and defending with Shroomshaw or sacrificing health every turn with the constant Wretched Brood.

A third shard that is often played with Shin'hare is the Diamond Shard because of the card Oath of Valor. The card will select the name Battle Hopper and turn your current and future token army into 2/3 troops as long as the constant is not removed from the field. Similarly, Soul Marble can be used to eventually create Soul Armaments and increase the power of all your Shin'hare troops, giving them an increase in stats, Spellshield and Steadfast. Using the Diamond Shard will also give the deck access to the shards all-stars like Angel of Dawn and Solitary Exile. This shard is usually combined with the Wild Shard Shin'hare strategy because of their greater token generation speed than the Blood Shard variants.

=Drafting Shin'hare= When attempting to draft Shin'hare, you will find there are many cards at the common Rarity that can support them. Tribal support at this rarity includes Concubunny which will often be your draft decks main strategy for generating your tokens. Shroomshaw is also at common rarity and because of this it is often best to play a Wild and Blood Shin'hare deck in draft. Finally there is Runts of the Litter and Shroomtank however the latter can be quite slow so if your Battle Hopper generating is strong enough it may not be needed in your deck.

Still at the common rarity, Evolve and the artifact Command Tower will be the cards you will most often be using to power up your Shin'hare, while Blood Cauldron Ritualist can be used as a solid early game troop.

Uncommon Rarity cards to look out for includes Bucktooth Commander, Succulent Roostasaur which can exhaust your Shin'hares to become powerful temporarily or sacrifice them to gain health, Shin'hare Eulogist, Rune Ear Commander and Sensei of the Wounded Petal which can be used to keep your health high when you have a huge field. Boltpaw Wizard can also be used to counter the stat increasing instants often used in draft.

While most in shard rares should be picked up over commons and uncommons, Uzume, Grand Concubunny is definitely something to especially look out for as it can win games by itself for you in draft.

You will not always be able to draft a deck full of Shin'hares however, so it is best to look for good cards at the common and uncommon rarity when the needed Shin'hare cards are not present in your draft picks. For common these include Murder, Giant Corpse Fly, Blood Aura, Howling Brave, Wailing Banshee, Wild Aura, Wild Growth, Boulder Brute and Moon'ariu Sensei who is also a Shin'hare. At the uncommon rarity these can be Corrupt Harvester, Necessary Sacrifice, Shamed Gladiator, Rot Caster, Crazed Squirrel Titan, Pheromones, Oakhenge Ceremony and Turbulence which will help you deal with Flight troops, one of the decks defensive weaknesses.

Tribal Weaknesses
Because the deck relies on the grounded Battle Hopper tokens for defense, troops with Flight can get through and deal game winning damage before the Shin'hare strategies can go off. Crush is a another weakness that breaks their defense as the tokens have weak toughness, however the Shin'hares can be powered up and beat Crush troops in combat.

The deck needs tokens to function properly and these tokens are often weak until powered up and can be destroyed by cards like Heat Wave, or no matter their stats, always destroyed by Extinction. If late in the game it can be very hard for the tribe to come back into offense after losing an entire board of tokens.

While the Blood strategies can also use the same win conditions as a pure Wild based Shin'hare deck, they still become much weaker if they key troops are removed from the board. Because of this even singular removal can hurt the Blood and Wild combination.

The Oath of Valor strategy can be greatly hurt by a well timed Time Ripple after the Shin'hare player commits to attack declaration, or just in general by having their constants continuously removed from the field.